Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
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Full Name and Common Aliases
Herbert Alexander Simon was born on June 15, 1916, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is commonly referred to as Herbert Simon.
Birth and Death Dates
Birth: June 15, 1916
Death: February 9, 2001 (aged 84)
Nationality and Profession(s)
Herbert Simon was an American economist, political scientist, and cognitive psychologist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.
Early Life and Background
Simon grew up in a Jewish family in Milwaukee. His father, Arthur Simon, was a businessman who owned a small hardware store. Herbert's early interests lay in mathematics and science, which were encouraged by his parents. He attended the University of Chicago at the age of 16, where he studied economics and mathematics.
Major Accomplishments
Simon's work spanned multiple disciplines, including economics, psychology, computer science, and philosophy. His major accomplishments include:
Cognitive Psychology: Simon was a pioneer in cognitive psychology, which studies mental processes such as perception, attention, memory, language, problem-solving, and decision-making.
Bounded Rationality: He introduced the concept of bounded rationality, which suggests that humans make decisions based on limited information and cognitive abilities.
Simulation Theory: Simon proposed the simulation theory, which posits that human thinking is similar to computer simulations.Notable Works or Actions
Some of Simon's notable works include:
Models of Man (1957): This book introduced the concept of bounded rationality and explored its implications for decision-making.
The Sciences of the Artificial (1969): In this book, Simon discussed the nature of artificial intelligence and its relationship to human cognition.
Administrative Behavior (1947): Co-authored with Donald K. Smith, this book applied behavioral science to organizational management.
Impact and Legacy
Herbert Simon's work has had a profound impact on various fields, including economics, psychology, computer science, and philosophy. His ideas have influenced many prominent thinkers, including:
Nobel Prize: Simon was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978 for his contributions to understanding human decision-making.
Academic Legacy: He founded the Center for Decision Research at Carnegie Mellon University, which continues to be a hub for research on cognitive psychology and decision-making.
Why They Are Widely Quoted or Remembered
Herbert Simon is widely quoted and remembered for his insightful observations on human behavior, cognition, and decision-making. His work has had a lasting impact on our understanding of artificial intelligence, organizational management, and the complexities of human thought.
Quotes by Herbert A. Simon
I started off thinking that maybe the social sciences ought to have the kinds of mathematics that the natural sciences had. That works a little bit in economics because they talk about costs, prices and quantities of goods.
Technology may create a condition, but the questions are what do we do about ourselves. We better understand ourselves pretty clearly and we better find ways to like ourselves.
Maybe we ought to have a world in which things are divided between people kind of fairly.
I don't care how big and fast computers are, they're not as big and fast as the world.
Most of us really aren't horribly unique. There are 6 billion of us. Put 'em all in one room and very few would stand out as individuals. So maybe we ought to think of worth in terms of our ability to get along as a part of nature, rather than being the lords over nature.
Human knowledge has been changing from the word go and people in certain respects behave more rationally than they did when they didn't have it. They spend less time doing rain dances and more time seeding clouds.
One of the first rules of science is if somebody delivers a secret weapon to you, you better use it.
The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be - how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and to function.
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.